Penelope Health secures €87 million for healthcare policy
London-based Penelope Health has received an €87 million funding commitment to expand its real-time provider and payer policy intelligence platform, which
Penelope Health, a London-based real-time provider and payer policy intelligence platform, has secured a €87 million ($100 million) funding commitment. The funds, committed by infrastructure platform Thoreau and existing investors Bertelsmann Healthcare Investments, Twine Ventures, and Seedcamp, will be used to create new products that bring administrative efficiency to handling payer requirements.
Dr. Sohum Patel, Chief Executive Officer of Penelope Health, says the company was founded to tackle a fundamental problem. The rules that determine whether care is covered by insurance are foundational to the healthcare system, yet they remain opaque, fragmented, difficult to interpret, and are constantly changing, he stated.
The administrative burden in healthcare
Patel co-founded the company in 2025 with Chief Technology Officer Mattijs De Paepe after practicing within the UK's National Health Service. He saw firsthand how administrative complexity interferes with patient care. The company's platform aims to convert the complex web of disparate payer data into a single, usable infrastructure layer for healthcare providers.
This layer enables healthcare companies to check coverage requirements, compare policies across different payers, and streamline internal operations. It provides organisations with instant, structured access to payer medical coverage policies for the majority of insured Americans, replacing custom, one-off connections and manual policy searches.
Funding and partnership for shared infrastructure
The new capital comes alongside a partnership with HealthTech infrastructure platform Thoreau. Together, they plan to create a shared layer for real-time payments and clinical rules. Mattijs De Paepe, Penelope's CTO, emphasized the technical challenge and the broader vision. "Realising our vision requires a deep technical understanding of constantly evolving payer rules," he said. "We believe that a shared infrastructure layer can remove administrative burden for both payers and providers."
De Paepe previously spent nearly four years at Via Transportation building machine-learning systems, experience now applied to healthcare's administrative maze. The company states the opportunity extends far beyond any single workflow, aiming to power a more efficient overall system.
The 2026 European HealthTech investment landscape
Penelope's funding is part of a continued 2026 investment trend in European healthcare infrastructure and AI tools designed to reduce administrative workloads. According to the source, EU-Startups has reported approximately €182.5 million across a selected group of comparable funding rounds this year.
| Company | Location | Funding Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Tandem Health | Stockholm | €86.5 million |
| Recare | Berlin | Up to €37 million |
| Health Force | Barcelona | €4.2 million |
| Semble | London | €34.7 million |
| Flexzo AI | Not specified | €10.3 million |
These investments target various pain points, from hospital-insurance processes like prior-authorisation checks, handled by Health Force's AI agents, to scaling healthcare management platforms, as with Semble.
Platform scale and coverage
Penelope's platform currently covers policies for over 200 million Americans. Its database spans more than 15,000 procedures and drug codes, creating a comprehensive reference that healthcare companies can use in real time to handle the opaque and constantly changing rules of insurance coverage.
